How can we support youth ages 13-18 to set goals, form healthy relationships and make smart choices?

Situation:

The Family Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) within the Administration for Children & Families works to help prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among adolescents through its Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (APP) program. The APP program supports state, Tribal and community efforts to teach abstinence and contraceptive education. In 2016, new legislation passed that established sexual risk avoidance education as part of FYSB’s APP portfolio. This led to a collaborative effort with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health and a call for the development and launch of a National social media campaign. 

Task:

There are different schools of thought when it comes to sexual education and various stakeholder tensions to navigate. Given this, when RTI International was awarded funding to help make this campaign happen, we were crystal clear: Youth needed to lead the way. I served as the Campaign Director from campaign inception through 2021 and led a 14-person, cross-functional team from discovery to launch and beyond. This included discovery, implementation, and optimization of a National social media campaign focused on goal setting and poverty prevention.

Action:

• Advocated for youth-centered design with politically-appointed and Federal program leadership. This involved conveying the evidence base for why participatory research and youth input is critical for campaign success. Combined behavior change science and marketing strategy with youth-centered design methods to support young people with decision-making.

• Analyzed over 100 campaigns, peer-reviewed literature and educational curricula to inform campaign messaging and strategies. Desk research helped curate evidence-to-date and capture learnings from previous and current campaigns targeting adolescent risk behaviors. This helped differentiate the campaign within the online and social landscape and identify advanced marketing techniques to apply.

• Guided the development of a creative test kitchen and customer insiders club, providing early-access to 300+ youth across 26 states, to incubate ideas, curate insights and support an award-winning social campaign.

• Co-implemented social media experiments involving A/B testing assessing for variables across creative, audience and placements.

• Formed a private sector Youth Social Media Innovation Team including members from NBCUniversal, Disney, and Google, to help keep pulse on youth marketing, media trends and emerging technology trends the campaign should consider.

• Reviewed and responsible for all social media activity, providing quality control and support for social media content planning and development including editorial calendar management.

• Wrote, maintained and trained staff on the campaign’s social media comment policy and engagement guidelines. Involved consulting Federal policy documents and keeping a pulse on Federal digital trends and rule making to ensure consistent, ethical practices.

• Hosted Create Your Future: A National Arts Contest, where teens submitted original artwork including drawings, paintings and digital art. Winners were selected by a jury of teens.

• Implemented social media advertising and influencer marketing strategies with a focus on micro-influencers to help promote core campaign messages and engagement opportunities.

• Built a custom analytics dashboard using Google Data Studio that provides an at-a-glance snapshot of key performance indicators. This helped FYSB leverage data-driven, actionable insights in real time for continuous improvement.

Results:

• Stakeholder buy-in. Meetings with Federal stakeholders went from doubt and asking “What is youth-centered design?” to curiosity and enthusiasm. As the campaign went on, Federal partners started meetings asking for the latest in what teens want and asking for increased youth input on campaign messaging and activities.

• Participatory design. While the campaign started with the motto “with teens, for teens”, the campaign moved to “by teens, for teens” with teens authoring more of the campaign’s content and imagery.

• High engagement. Published over 1,000 social media posts, stories and ads, reaching more than 7 million people. Campaign’s Instagram account outpaced industry standards with an average organic engagement rate of about 9.6%.

• Digital products. Features a collection of more than 25 mobile-friendly digital products such as Buzzfeed-style quizzes, games, videos, listicles, stories, infographics, playlists, and interactive tools.

• Industry-recognized. Recognized by 10 industry awards for the campaign, its website and specific product components. This includes a Platinum Award at the 2022 AVA Digital Awards and a 2021 Blue Pencil and Gold Screen Award for best website, among other recognitions.